WT Manual of Style Tips

The Wikitravel (WT) Manual of Style was full of articles and tips on how best to shape a topic article, but here are 3 that stood out to me as especially pertinent and/or helpful:

1. Bodies of Water - this subject of this article isn't something that most people would think about until they actually need to start writing about a body of water, which makes sense. When someone does need to write about a body of water, this page makes it clear that said body is to be discussed under the page for the city or town that it's in. If the water is an attraction, it can be part of a See or Do itinerary, or can influence the path of an itinerary in a location near the body of water. The article isn't especially long, but it does give the basic ideas of where information about bodies of water goes and some direction about what to do with it.
2. Tone - this article was much longer, and had a lot of points that should be common sense for informed/informative and objective writing. Some of the more significant points were to avoid personal pronouns (I, we, our, my), although "you" and "your" are fine; being fair doesn't have to mean being long-winded and boring or formal; be concise; avoid cliches; and careful generalizations and humor are alright, but should be carefully considered and worded so that the intention isn't lost on, or misinterpreted by, the audience. This can be a lot to consider when writing, but allows for quality information and presentation in the article.
3. Words to Avoid - another fairly short article, but makes some good points and emphasizes the connotations of partiality in certain words and how they can be misinterpreted by the readers. Tips include avoiding empty, flowery language ("premiere, luxurious"); vagueness ("unique, severe penalties, recommended, affordable") and words that have different cultural meanings ("entree, tourist"). Again, this is a lot to remember for contributers, but it really aids the effectiveness of the language being used in the articles and contributes to the quality of writing.

Project 2: Wikitravel

My 3 potential Wikitravel pages are probably:
1. Coventry, RI
2. Greene, RI
3. Kent County, RI

Since there are no Wikitravel pages for either Coventry or Greene, RI, I could definitely make a page dedicated to either subject, as I am from Coventry and currently live there, and grew up in Greene (a village in Coventry). I know a lot about Coventry and Greene, so I feel that I could contribute a significant amount of information to a Wikitravel page about either, though Coventry would certainly have more to offer in the way of amount of content and contemporary content (information about Greene, RI is mostly from a historical standpoint).

There is a Wikitravel page for Kent County, RI, but it is not extensive and only has linked pages for 3 of the 5 towns listed on the page. As a Kent County native, I think I could provide a good deal of information to this page, should my plan to create a Coventry (or back-up, Greene) page fall through. In fact, almost every section of the Kent County page is left empty, so to contribute to the page, I would not even have to do all that much.

Though my interest in contributing to the Kent County Wikitravel page is piqued, I would prefer to create a page for Coventry, so I hope that I can follow through with that plan. If not, though, Kent County would be a nice and intresting back-up page. Either way, I'll have to do a bit of research on all of my potential topics.
Off to Wikipedia...

Wikitravel thoughts

I knew that Wikipedia had many different sub-Wikis in all manners of subjects, but I never thought that there might be a travel Wiki. Probably because I'm not the travelling type, but I digress. I'm actually quite surprised that Wikitravel hasn't been featured in one of those Travelocity commercials with the Roaming Gnome or William Shatner and Priceline.com.

Wikitravel seems like a very useful addition to the site [Wikipedia] for people who are interested in travelling (duh) or who want to learn in-depth about different countries, cities, states, and so on, especially from a common person or tourist's point of view. The concept of people being able to post additions to a specific Wiki article from any country (or state, city, so on) and be able to share information about that country with other people who are intrested seems a very handy one. All of the information gets very specific, as well, so for tourists who want to know how they would be able to get around a city, what major cities are in a country, where certain churches or airports are, what food is like, etc. Wikitravel is like a godsend for planning trips, creating itineraries, and the like.

The main drawbacks with the site are the expectations as listed in the Policies and Goals/Non-Goals sections. "All text should be fair" is certainly an expected characteristic of useful information, but being a publicly-edited source, there are definitely bound to be opinionated, derogatory and badmouthing posts. There will always be some naysayer or delinquent that takes delight in bashing someone or something or someplace, and hopefully the measures taken by the filtering and editing team will be more than enough to catch and delete any objectionable posts. Also, some of the non-goals listed are going to be difficult to enforce. There isn't even any guarantee that many Wikitravel users will read the goals and/or policies sections, nevermind abide by them. Surely many users will post content that will be in opposition with policies like "do note create a travel anthology" or "do not make an advertising brouchure" simply because users are likely to be casual contributors, and won't always write content in accordance with such rules. And if many people post contributions like that on any kind of regular basis, then filtering information is sure to be an unruly job for the team designated to do it.

That being said, Travelwiki seems like it would be an exceptional site to use in the Travel Writing class offered at URI, simply because of the fact that the purposes and objectives of the two are very likely to coincide. Should I take Travel Writing as a class toward my major in the future, I'll be sure to make use of Travelwiki. I just might add it to my list of Wikis to look at while passing the time, too.